The best of the aged

The other day I wrote about the leaders (by position) in career regular season minutes played past the age of 35. Today I’ll take a look at the players at each position who have managed to produce the most wins as an older player.

PG: John Stockton

77.3 wins, 2nd all-time

Stockton is top among point guards in minutes played, so it’s not really that much of a surprise that he also leads PGs in total wins. Ignoring Jason Kidd (more on him in a bit), Stockton’s closest competition is Steve Nash, who is at 39.9 old man wins (and counting).

SG: Jason Kidd

59.4 wins (and counting), 3rd all-time

Some may view this as cheating a little, but Jason Kidd has always been big for a point guard and rebounds very well at his position. This season, the Knicks have capitalized on this and started playing him alongside Ray Felton and Pablo Prigioni, making Kidd a shooting guard. Long-known for his excellent play, Kidd deserves to be recognized as one of the greatest old guys to ever play basketball. Ignoring Reggie Miller (more on him in a bit), the next highest win total among SGs is Ray Allen, with 22.4 old man wins (and counting).

SF: Reggie Miller

49.0 wins, 4th all-time

Again, we’re going to use some creativity and put Miller at small forward. At 6’7″, Miller had the height to play forward, even if he was scrawny and wasn’t that good at anything except shooting. The thing is, though, that Miller was very good at shooting: he finished with a career True Shooting percentage of 61.4, which is very rare. His closest competition at small forward, Grant Hill, is at 27.5 old man wins (and counting), but Hill’s play may actually start shrinking his win total, instead of adding to it.

PF: Karl Malone

47.3 wins, 5th all-time

The Mailman delivered longer than any other power forward in NBA history, and he also delivered more wins. He barely beat out Dennis Rodman, who finished with 44.8 old man wins in less than half the minutes, but we’ll cut him some slack for the moment.

C: Robert Parish

80.7 wins, 1st all-time

You’re still probably surprised about Parish, aren’t you? He barely beat out Karrem Abdul-Jabbar in old man minutes, but old Kareem falls well short of old Parish’s win totals: Abdul-Jabbar finished with only 41.3 old man wins. While the story might be different if we took a look at their entire careers, Parish was certainly more productive as an older player.